1863.1 ]^33 [Carleton. 



But as we have no right to suppose that other evils than those 

 mentioned in Scripture were visited upon the guilty pair, whence 

 then came earthquakes, volcanoes, tempests, inundations, or commo- 

 tions of the air, that have destroyed such multitudes of mankind ? 

 or whence came revenge, hate, malice, ambition, and lust, that have 

 reddened the earth with the blood of her children, or the diseases, 

 sufferings, and death of infants that have never sinned, or the op- 

 pressions of the weak by the strong, or the miseries of all living 

 things that suffer from the sport and tyranny of men, whose all-de- 

 vouring stomachs call for a daily sacrifice of millions at a meal ? 



It was the sovereign pleasure of the Deity to create different 

 orders of imperfect beings from the insect up to man, all subject 

 alike to suffering, disease, and death, and to place them on a globe, 

 the imperfections of which are of a piece with their own. The ex- 

 istence of good and evil comes from the same Power, whose pleasure 

 it was to create all things as they are. 



It borders on blasphemy to argue that God could be the author of 

 sin in any form. Sin is the transgression of a rule of conduct pre- 

 scribed to man. God cannot sin. He cannot make graven images 

 of Himself, honor His father or mother, or bear false witness against 

 His neighbor. He knows no law but His own good pleasure. 

 When He cuts off thousands by pestilence, wars, or earthquakes. He 

 violates no law. He is a law unto Himself; there is no standard 

 above Him. 



NECESSITY. 



It is a grievous evil that a question of fact, as is that of Liberty 

 and Necessity, should remain unsettled after a controversy of more 

 than two thousand years. The reason is plain. Unable to conceive 

 how a determination of the mind could be the immediate cause of 

 action, philosophers have invented a power they call the Will, which 

 they imagined might actuate a man as the spring does the machinery 

 of a watch, or the weights that of a clock. 



This fiction is made the basis of every treatise on the mind, ac- 

 cording as the writer shall espouse the side of Liberty or Necessity. 

 One great truth, however, has been wrought out of this controversy 

 by President Edwards, who has shown, beyond the possibility of a 

 doubt, that all actions arise from "the perception of the greatest 

 apparent good by a law of our nature, which we could not resist if 

 we would, and would not if we could." 



But that acute logician, yielding to the prejudice of the age. 



